Good morning. The elevation of Valeant Pharmaceutical International Inc.’s director and former finance chief Howard Schiller to interim CEO shines a spotlight on an unusual element of the board’s structure. At least of third of its members are executive-level finance professionals, far more than is common, reports CFO Journal’s Richard Teitelbaum.“Having so many directors on the board with CFO-related and accounting related background is relatively rare,” said Yaniv Grinstein, adjunct professor of finance at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. The question is whether this abundance of financial acumen is coming at the expense of other skills that may be nearly as important for a well-functioning board.

In the absence of a CEO or other kinds of stress at a corporation, the prominence of the board often increases along with its responsibilities and, sometimes, questions about its composition. An eclectic mix of skill sets is considered key. “It’s most important to have diversity of experiences,” said Karen Brenner, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “You don’t necessarily need duplicative skills.”

In this case, some argue the board is tilting too far towards financial experience. “There is a disproportionate share,” said James Drury III, CEO of James Drury Partners, a board advisory services firm. And yet governance experts have bemoaned the dearth of financial expertise on corporate boards. For example, 42 Fortune 500 CFOs served on the boards of other Fortune 500 companies that are not their own, according to Equilar Inc., a data provider. And just 17 Fortune 500 CFOs in the 2015 ranking served on their own corporate boards, based on their 2015 proxies.

CFO JOURNAL TODAY

CFOs pay more for new talent. Finance chiefs are dishing out more cash to hire the right people for their companies, John Kester reports. According to Robert Half International Inc., they are paying new hires an average of 10% more than their previous employer.

Retailers faced a host of challenges during the holidays, as customers increasingly waited for discounts or preferred to buy online.

Richard B. Levine/Zuma Press

Holiday sales rise, but not all retailers are cheery. Consumers didn’t pull back as much as feared during the holidays, but their late spending surge didn’t help retailers that were ill-equipped to deal with changes in behavior that will last beyond the season. Retail sales rose 3.3% from Oct. 31 through Jan. 4, about the same pace as they grew the previous year.

Ford expects pretax profit boost from pension shift.Ford Motor Co. is changing how it accounts for pension plans, a move that should boost company earnings while making profitability in Europe more likely and giving a clearer picture of the automotive group’s underlying performance. It is shifting to “mark-to-market” accounting for pension and retiree-benefit plans. That means the auto maker will recognize gains and losses from the plans in the earnings of years when they occur, instead of its current practice of gradually “smoothing” them into its results over a number of years.

Millennial shoppers don’t fit the norm. Retailers have been experimenting with ways to bring more younger customers into their stores. But the shopping patterns of millennials aren’t easy to figure out. Many in the group—now the largest part of the workforce—prioritize experiences, like a dinner out or a trip away, over accumulating new handbags or the latest videogame.

Saudi Arabia mulls selling shares in Aramco. Saudi Arabia is said to be considering selling shares in its state-owned oil company, Saudi Arabian Oil Co. The move that comes amid a broad privatization effort afoot in the kingdom, but also at a vulnerable time for Riyadh because of tumbling energy prices.

Apple shares close below $100 amid China, iPhone worries.Apple Inc. shares closed below $100 for the first time in 15 months, gripped by Thursday’s sharp market decline and signs of slowing growth in the two pillars of the company’s recent success: the iPhone and China. Signs of weakness in the iPhone come after new, larger-screen models propelled Apple to record results in its fiscal year ended Sept. 26. Buoyed by China’s rising middle class, Apple’s Greater China sales in that period grew 84%, and the company overall posted revenue of $233 billion for the year. Now, both of those growth engines appear at risk.

Commodities rout forces oil, mining firms to cut further. Struggling resource companies are facing renewed pressure to cut spending and investor payouts in the early days of 2016 after a deepening commodities rout erased billions of dollars in shareholder value. U.S. oil prices slid to their lowest levels since 2004, hammered by the market turmoil in China, the world’s second-biggest consumer of the fuel.

Shell executives try to seal BG deal.Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s management has stepped up engagement with shareholders and analysts to convince them of the merits of their proposed multibillion-dollar bid for BG Group PLC ahead of a key shareholder vote on the matter later this month. If approved, the merger will give the Anglo-Dutch oil giant a dominant position in the growing liquefied natural-gas market as well as stakes in highly prized oil fields offshore Brazil. BG investors will receive a chunky premium for selling up if the deal goes through.

Bonuses get squeezed on Wall Street. When the country’s biggest banks start telling employees the value of their annual bonuses as early as next week, many traders will suffer sharp cuts.

United faces questions over CEO’s health.United Continental Holdings Inc. on Thursday said its CEO Oscar Munoz was in good health following a heart transplant and gave details regarding his contract in a regulatory filing. The statement quoted the chief of cardiac surgery at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital as saying the surgery went well and that given Mr. Munoz’s “excellent physical condition” and rapid improvement before the transplant, “we expect a quick recovery and a return to his duties as CEO.”

Bar-code readers get makeover to spur bustling warehouses. Scanner guns, the bar-code readers used in warehouses world-wide, are getting a makeover. The brick-on-a-stick devices are being reborn in a variety of forms ranging from special rings worn on hands to modified smartphones. The aim is to help retailers fill a surge in online orders by shaving a few precious seconds off the time it takes for workers to select, pack and ship items

Highlights from CES. Television technology made progress at both the high and low ends at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Famed whistleblower and fugitive Edward Snowden was also present, in robotic form—courtesy of a device called Beam that uses a technology called telepresence.

A high-tech suit offers a sneak peek at the ravages of aging. The R70i Age Suit made by Applied Minds LLC and shown at CES simulates vision and hearing loss, as well as reduced mobility from muscle deterioration and arthritis. Created for insurance firm Genworth Financial, the suit aims to make the wearer feel 40 years older. Genworth says it hopes to help caregivers gain a better understanding of their patients—and perhaps get the rest of us to better appreciate our own aging.

REGULATION

The People’s Bank Of China in the financial district of Beijing, Nov. 9, 2015.

Shingo Ito/AFLO/Zuma Press

Why China shifted its strategy for the yuan, and how it backfired. China’s moves to guide the yuan lower have set off a free fall in the currency and global market reverberations as investors pile on the bets against the yuan—ultimately a no-win situation for Beijing. The People’s Bank of China’s efforts to steer the currency lower were pounced on by investors who sold in droves, effectively engaging the central bank in a titanic struggle over who gets to control how far and fast the yuan declines.

The problem with market circuit breakers.China’s latest effort to tame volatility is another sign that trying to control markets through crude tools at the exchange level may actually increase problems. China implemented a marketwide circuit breaker on Monday ostensibly to help manage expected gyrations in share prices in the weeks and months ahead. But trading hit the maximum price-change threshold of 7% two days this week, causing trading to be halted on Monday and Thursday. Total trading time on Thursday morning lasted only about 30 minutes. China’s securities regulator announced late Thursday that ​it would suspend the circuit breaker, saying it failed to calm the markets and instead worsened the selloff.

EARNINGS

A worker monitors bottles of Corona Extra at Constellation’s facility in Nava, Mexico. The company plans to add capacity to the unit.

Julia Robinson for The Wall Street Journal

Constellation Brands reports profit jumped.Constellation Brands Inc. said Thursday it will pour $1.5 billion into construction of a second Mexican brewery, as it tries to keep pace with soaring U.S. demand for Corona Extra and Modelo Especial.

Finish Line to close 25% of stores and replace CEO.Finish Line Inc. said it plans to close up to a quarter of its stores over the next few years and is replacing its chief executive, as severe supply-chain disruptions drove the company to a deep loss for the third quarter.

ECONOMY

Chinese stock markets recovered Friday after a tumultuous week. But few expect the relative calm to last.

Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

Global stocks enjoy a moment’s peace. Chinese stocks closed up 2% after the government suspended its trading-halt mechanism overnight and European shares edged higher as markets stabilized. The calm comes after fears about slowing economic growth in China and volatility in its stock markets spooked global markets on Monday and Thursday, driving U.S. stocks to their worst-ever start to a year.

Yuan’s tumble sends tremors through world markets. The swift pace of China’s currency decline is threatening to undermine global economic growth and pressuring markets at a time when many countries already are struggling. China’s slowing growth already has hammered commodity prices, from oil to copper. Now, economists worry that a weaker yuan could further reduce the country’s purchasing power in international markets, hurting countries that export to China.

Downside risks loom over Europe’s 2016 economy. China’s faltering economy isn’t good news for growth anywhere in the world, let alone for Europe, where the economy has emerged from the worst of its doldrums but still needs all the help it can get.

CFO MOVES

Meritage Homes Corp., a homebuilder based in Scottsdale, Ariz., named Hilla Sferruzza finance chief, effective April 1. Ms. Sferruzza, its accounting chief, will succeed Larry Seay, who will retire at the end of March after 20 years with the company as its CFO. Retirement “will allow me to spend more time with my family and experience new adventures,” Mr. Seay said in a news release. Compensation information for Ms. Sferruzza wasn’t immediately disclosed. Mr. Seay received 2014 compensation valued at $2.6 million, including a salary of $600,000, equity awards valued at $911,885 and a bonus of $1.1 million, according to its most recent proxy filing.

Blue Coat Systems Inc., a closely held enterprise-security company based in Sunnyvale, Calif., named Nick Noviello CFO. He will succeed Gregg Hampton, its CFO for the past three years, who will remain with the company as senior vice president of business operations. Mr. Noviello is CFO of NetApp Inc., a data-management company based in Sunnyvale. Mr. Noviello’s compensation arrangements weren’t disclosed. NetApp said Jeffrey Bergmann, its vice president of corporate finance, will assume the CFO role on an interim basis, and Mr. Noviello will remain with the company until Jan. 14 to assist with the transition. Mr. Bergmann’s compensation will remain as it was.

UFC, a professional mixed-martial-arts organization owned by closely held Las Vegas sports-marketing firm Zuffa LLC, named Nakisa Bidarian CFO. Mr. Bidarian was previously UFC’s executive vice president of strategy and business ventures and has been with UFC for four years. He succeeds John Mulkey, who a spokeswoman said stepped down at the end of December. Compensation information wasn’t disclosed. UFC said Mr. Bidarian previously led international real estate, hospitality investment and asset management for Mubadala Development Co., a sovereign-investment firm based in Abu Dhabi, and before that was an investment banker.

THE WEEKEND READER

Every weekend we select a handful of in-depth articles we think are worth a bit of your valuable time, either because they peel back the layers on a compelling business story, or somehow make us look at business in a different light.

How the GM ignition-switch scandal came to light. It isn’t easy proving causality, much less untangling the complex engineering behind it, when trying to draw a line between a defect in a product as complex as a modern car and a particular accident. But the legal discovery process is a long and winding road, and it was a diligent attorney named Lance Cooper whose investigations ultimately brought GM’s problems with its ignition switches to light, writes Max Blau for Atlanta Magazine in a profile of the Georgia-based attorney. “Product liability cases are won and lost not in the courtroom, but in the long slog of the discovery process—the establishment of facts, the boxes of documents, the endless depositions,” Mr. Blau writes. That research is all the more complicated, given that “Modern automobiles are essentially rolling computers, so any evaluation of them is as much electronic as it is mechanical.”

Things to avoid: Land war in Asia, education reform. Improving public-education reform has been a popular issue for CEOs concerned both with insuring the quality of incoming employees in a global economy and wanting to make a larger difference on society. But the uproar over Common Core education standards, begun in 2010 after decades of discussion and with the input and support of the CEOs at companies like Exxon Mobil, Intel and GE, has some corporate sponsors backpedaling fast. Fortune’s Peter Elking details the story about how “some of the nation’s foremost capitalists” became accused of “promoting an ‘immoral,’ ‘freedom-robbing,’ ‘socialist agenda,’ aimed at turning America’s children into ‘mindless drones for the corporate salt mines.’ ”

What your CEO may be flying. Your CEO is meeting with board membersin five minutesdowntown, but roads are packed, and the last time the CEO took the subway, the musical “Cats” was still in preview. What to do? In the near-ish future, corporate handlers may have the ability to stuff their public-transportation-ignorant executive into a personalized “drone” and hit “send.” At the Consumer Electronics Show this week Chinese company Ehang showed off a single-seater autonomous aircraft controlled by a tablet. Riders type on a map to build the route. The aircraft’s batteries allow for a 20-minute flight, or 50 miles, Quartz reports. Good enough to hit that meeting, or the links. It goes on sale later this year for $200,000 to $300,000. FAA regulation workaround not included.

Content from our sponsorDeloitteCFO insight and analysis written and compiled by Deloitte

For some CFOs, information technology and its related costs can look like a black box, one that they might be reluctant to open. Meanwhile, as the pace of digital technology innovations quickens—along with its ability to disrupt business—CFOs are being inundated with technology requests, and differentiating them can be difficult. Charles Holley, an independent senior advisor to Deloitte, discusses how a top-down, strategy-first approach to evaluating technology requests can help CFOs filter which projects might make the most sense from a strategic and financial standpoint, given short- and long-term priorities.

Please note: The Wall Street Journal News Department was not involved in the creation of the content above.More from Deloitte →